Power and Grace

Psalm 62

Two things the Psalmist has heard, that the Lord is strong, and that the Lord is loving (verses 11-12). His power would only be terrible without grace. His grace would be ineffective without his power. With him this is a unique and necessary combination. I witnessed a sort of worldly power and grace combined the other day, in a way that I admit rather impressed me.

With some time on our hands older son (12) and I on Monday were strolling along Front Street in Toronto east of the downtown core. There be a Porsche dealership there. So we sort of dusted ourselves off and entered. “Please do not touch,” a sign said. We didn’t. I was rather surprised how many models were on display. We had actually looked around for some time before a very nice lady smiled at us and asked, “May I help you, or are you just looking?” I think she knew the answer. One thought: Porsche = power and gracefulness.

Fast forward a few hours to later in the day. This time Melissa and I are with younger son (10) while older son is occupied (long busy day in the city, won’t bore you with the details). In the waiting area there was a mom dealing, but not really, with 2 boys a little younger than ours who proved to be quite unmanageable, loud, fighting, oblivious to everyone else around – a handful of us in the room trying find somewhere else to put our attention. Reaction of younger son was especially interesting – stunned silence; even he was embarrassed for them (or maybe thinking, “at least I’m/we’re not that bad.”

No evidence of power and grace there in that room then. But then that’s precisely the kind of setting in which God’s power and grace are most to be found.

If you do get yourself a Porsche, the power and grace are ready at hand. But what does it really amount to? (Well, OK, I wouldn’t mind finding out.) It is intriguing that we tend to use this profoundly powerful word, grace, sometimes just for what is stylish, sleek, classy. We also combine the two in athleticism.

But it is where power and grace are least evident or obvious where real power and grace potentially may be found.

Consider:

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8);

or

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

The world can mislead us concerning what is real power, and what is full of grace, and how those are combined most powerfully. Thanks to God that he places the combination within us through his Son.

Prayer:
May I glorify you this day and every day, Lord, as the one who is both all power and all love, and completely and perfectly both, for our great blessing, and your own greater glory. Through Christ. Amen.

ECE

Psalm 61

Until I read this Psalm out loud to myself, I had passed over the phrase “higher than I” in verse 2. The Psalm’s thought-journey begins with a sense of need. The journey is able to go beyond that beginning because of the acknowledgment of a “rock that is higher than I.” The Psalmist is then able to connect not only with the rock who is the Rock, but with the faith history and community of those others who have turned to him. The combination of trust in God and connection with faith community is combined in verse 5. But there is a third component to the Psalmist’s network of support and strength: the king. The people look to a faithful leader who is himself faithful, and whose role works for the integrity of the life of the people, so they may live and worship as one.

Personal experience of a higher rock, a community memory and celebration (testimony) of his working in the life of people, and a leadership lovingly and personally committed to those two things and to growth in them: this Psalm provides a simple outline of sound Bible-based community and leadership: Experience,
Celebration, Encouragement.

Prayer:
Lord, help me live up to what I call my job on my Facebook profile: Chief Encourager. Through Christ. Amen.

The Enemy

Psalm 60

There is familiar territory, like your back yard, where the only danger might be insufficient sunscreen applied. There may be a stretch of road you travel so much you know every bend, every clump of trees, every sign. And yet we know that serious accidents happen at home, and vehicle collisions are most likely to happen where we travel most. (I like the guy who heard that most accidents happen with five blocks of home, so he moved.)

Then there are places that obviously are dangerous, but which most of us don’t have to experience, like Afghanistan and Iraq.

In this Psalm, the people have experienced danger, and defeat, in familiar territory. People in that part of the world still do. Funny, we think and pray – as of course well we should – of people from ‘our’ part of the world serving in danger zones, be we (or maybe I should speak for myself) tend to ignore what it must be like for people who live with constant danger right where they live.

The way we use the Psalms in devotion and worship might lead us actually to miss the kind of environment from which they come, which was often brutal. In this psalm the poet reflects on a defeat or severe trial his people have known (verses 1-3). He also reflects on the sovereignty of the land in which they have this experience: it belongs to the Lord. Words from the Lord compare parts of the land to familiar belongings. Towns and valleys and such are as familir to the Lord as it is as familiar to him as would the washbasin or sandals of the poet be to him.

So, the poet sees the answer for dealing with life in this land as putting his trust in the one who knows it, oversees it, even made it – and promised it to the Psalmist’s people. This gives rise to the kind of confident expression found in verses 4 and 5.

Still, actual experience leads to some hesitation on the poet’s part – in the form of the kind of “what if” question even the most faithful of us sometimes ask (see verse 10): What if God isn’t really for me? Having got the question out there, however, he moves right on, as should we. What other hope is there but in the one who is in charge of all things? You might see this as a bit lame – it’s not much of a faith that trusts in a deity because there is basically no alternative. This is to underestimate the dynamics of faith that is real faith – that genuinely trusts. Even Jesus, who knew exactly what was what, had an immense struggle in his trial of trials.

In the end, this Psalm may be about trampling down the enemy (verse 12b) of doubt. Move forward today not saying, “OK, God, if you’re there I hope you’ll help me,” but rather, “With God I (we) will gain the victory” (verse 12a).

Prayer:
Lord, I look forward to the victory you have in mind for me today, for your sake. Amen.

Raising the Bar

Psalm 59

What does God do with our prayers that request things that are not part of his character, or his will for us? The last three words of this Psalm seem out of sync with much of the rest of the content. Our prayers may be confused, but God is not, and neither are his answers.

I rather think that, like a good teacher, God builds on what he finds in our requests that are in keeping with his character and will. Meanwhile, part of our prayer could itself be to ask him to purify our thoughts, so that we will give him more to build on, and less to overcome.

Prayer:
Thank you, God, that I can be honest, like the Psalmist, in what I express to you. But I would also look to you to raise the bar a bit all the time, so that what is honest is also more faithful. Through Christ. Amen.

Before You Shove It Aside

Psalm 58

If you had the privilege of starting someone on reading the Bible, you probably would not start them with reading this Psalm, and particularly not verse 10. It’s there. It’s in Scripture. We can’t just shove it aside. But there is no need to start with it.

What it says, in its graphic Old Testament way, is that God really does deal with evil. What it says is that God give it to us to be part of his good, but judgment on evil is up to him. The community of the faithful benefit from this. That’s the take-it-with-you message you can filter out of the graphic content here. The faithful can continue and grow in their mission in the Lord, confident that those power against them will be dealt with.

Prayer:
Thanks that you do work justice through the chaos of this world. Show us and lead us in our part, since there is the chaos of conflicting and confused will everywhere. Through Christ. Amen.

Alive

Psalm 57

Many of us seem to go through our days in a daze. I’ve noticed people walking across parking lots without paying any attention to the traffic around them. Others walk backwards in malls or downtown on the sidewalk, talking to someone, and if you’re coming the other way you just have to stop and wait to see where they’re going! And that’s without any electronics plugged into them. I contribute my own share of inattentiveness and doziness to the course of any given day.

“Awake, my soul!” the Psalmist cries. What does it mean to call to your soul to become awake? ‘Soul’ in the Bible is not some hidden part of you, a part that floats away when you die. I understand ‘soul’ in the Bible to be something like what we would call our “being” – it’s the totality of what we are. Awakening the soul would be about being truly and fully alive, being attentive to the things of the day and then some, and then some indeed.

For the Psalmist, a whole sequence of things went with this. Musical instruments are called to life; the one who is fully alive, it seems, can call to the dawn to wake up – a sense of being in tune with all God’s creation, I take it. There is praise to all peoples, a sense of soaring in the heavens. Who needs drugs?

And all of this came out of resolve to remain ‘steadfast’ in the midst of the now-familiar onslaught of enemies.

What one thing keeps most of us from being truly alive? Fear. We’re afraid to be joyful because something will take it away. We’re afraid to trust because someone will hurt us. We’re afraid because we’re afraid we’ll be afraid and look stupid. So we cling to a lot of stuff that gives no security; and find comfort, excitement - and release from boredom, worry, rejection and hopelessness in addictive behaviours.

“Soul” rather than, say, “being” or “personhood” or something suggests to me a Lord; there is a greater spiritual connotation with the word, especially in the context in which we find it here. There is one who makes us truly alive. There is one who leads us, as Steven Curtis Chapman sings, to The Great Adventure. He breathed life into dirt and made the dirt a ‘living being’ (Genesis 2:7). A living being from dirt; what can he do with my day, my life, if truly I release it to him?

Then there is a whole mission that awaits, to the dazed.

Prayer:
Awake, my soul, Lord. Through Christ. Amen.

Tears in a Bottle

Psalm 56

It’s an image to stop you in your tracks – in a good way: God collecting our tears (verse 8). He either records them on his scroll, or collects them in his wineskin, depending on the translation. The latter image makes more sense. How striking to consider that God totally forgets our sins when we ask forgiveness, but records all our sorrows, or even collects them. This is compassion.

When trouble or grief comes, we are surrounded by comfort, for a while. Eventually life is assumed to get back to ‘normal’ (whatever that is), but we are left with the reality that has come.

God doesn’t forget.

Prayer:
God, help us set aside our preoccupation with the sins of others, and replace it with being attuned to one another’s sorrows. Through Christ. Amen.